Little sisters have humbled many a men. Like a daughter, it’s the girl you must protect and look after well into her journey into adulthood. She will date that guy just like you that you hate because, well, he’s just like you. You will become a hypocrite as you try to stop her from things that you look for in other women. Unlike a daughter, she will know YOU, the real unabridged version of you. She was there when you cried at Lion King, she knows the girl you called Wednesday night isn’t the one you’re on the phone with Thursday. My little sister that much worse, not only did she tag along around my way but she attended every school I attended (except college I would’ve burned her acceptance letter, kidding, I would’ve just ripped it up).

My aunt is my father’s little sister. Not far in age, she’s the thorn in my father’s side that my sister is in mine. Now my father, like me, is very private (dude you have a blog, look I don’t need that now). My father never speaks about his life. His autobiography, he went to school, joined the army, met my mother, and the stork brought us all. My aunt knows the real story. She would often tell them to me primarily because she sees him in me. Not always a compliment. So usually at a gathering, after a few drinks she will dig deep into her archives and tell a story about my father that he would literally run from Raleigh to Boston and karate kick her out the chair to stop her from telling.

The story involved my oldest brother’s mother, who my father was with before he met my mother. He never spoke much of her, it was assumed they were never an item, she got pregnant he stepped up. “That’s what you’re SUPPOSED to do” said Chris Rock. What really happened was that in spite of not being an item, my father didn’t just step up as a parent, he was ready to marry her. It was my aunt and my grandmother who talked him off the ledge. “He didn’t love her, you can’t build anything off obligation”

Taking it back a few months prior, me and “Her” are talking. She had made a joke about a kid, and it set in, we would have a toddler right now. Now the pregnancy was a topic we both tried to avoid, we made our positions known and had done our best to move on. But of course, I’m hardheaded peeked into Pandora’s box and asked her, why didn’t she even reach out to me. Her response, “I know you, you would’ve made it work and I wanted to be chose the right way not out of obligation”. Now granted unlike my father, I did have feelings for “Her”, but she could never believe me anymore. The cliche of “trapping a man” comes in, while I truly hate that notion and certainly know her better than that, would I ever truly believe her? Years later, no child, we decided to never take it beyond friendship, maybe we were both right.

My father’s story also struck a chord because of what happened after my mother. He tried hard to make it work with my little brother’s mother but again begged the question was it out of love or obligation. I hear him gush over his current fiance now and it’s clear it was the former. I could see he was in love with my mother, I can see he’s in love now. With his ex, I saw a man trying to make the most of a situation. That’s just the type of man he is. Is that the type of man, I am?